You Can Have it All (And So Can Everyone Else)

You Can Have it All (And So Can Everyone Else)

I recently had the opportunity to showcase my science fiction novels at a Comic Expo. Yes, you know the ones where Gandalf walks around with Captain Kirk and every anime character in between. There are also aisles and aisles of vendor booths, many of them small, local, independent artisans selling amazing, comic-themed art.

And as I walked around chatting with other vendors (primarily authors), I really noticed there were two types. The first eagerly told me about all the merits of their book. The second asked me about myself — what I liked to read, about my writing, how I was enjoying my first convention — and were keen to help me, sometimes pointing out other authors whose books I might enjoy if their books didn’t match what I liked to read, and asking how I was enjoying my first convention and even sharing their tips and tricks.

Guess whose books I bought?

There was nothing ‘wrong’ with the sales techniques of the first type of vendor. But the second type grasped their position in an entirely different way. The first type wanted me to buy their books. The second type wanted me to buy books — they understood there was more than enough to go around.

I’ve seen this dichotomy many times over, in different areas of my life — business owners who put other businesses down in an attempt to make theirs the best… athletes, artists, parents doing the same…. And then there are people who remain encouraging and supportive.

I think in the busy world we find ourselves in, it can be easy to get caught up in a culture of competition. Competition comes from a feeling of lack, of not being good enough. The problem is that when we think that way, we focus on what we don’t have, instead of what we do. Some authors think of the books they aren’t selling, but some think of the reader that is standing in front of them.

By itself, there seems to not be much difference — after all the authors who pointed me to other tables where I was more likely to find a book that suited me personally still didn’t make a sale. I bought books I wanted to read. Maybe they all could have tried harder to convince me their book would be a read I would really enjoy.

The difference is this: the authors who worked to get to know me, now have a connection. And the authors who sent me elsewhere gained my appreciation and, I’m sure, the appreciation of the author whose book I did buy.

You see, that energy of seeing what we have, the abundance mindset, is infectious. You actually vibrate at a higher level than if you are thinking about lack, whih is a lower level vibration. And when you vibrate at a higher level, you attract more positive things and people to you.

Lack is infectious too. The authors who focused on the sales they wanted to make but weren’t getting didn’t build a relationship with me or with any of the other authors. Their focus, and their vibration, was small. They didn’t have the ability to attract things to them the same way.

It may come as counter-intuitive to us, conditioned as we are for competition, but the best way to get ahead, financially or otherwise, is to help others get ahead.

And the one fundamental shift that it takes is understanding that abundance is infinite.  There are not, as our conditioned minds would have us believe, a specific amount of dollars available, and everyone needs to grab as much as they can.  It is not a game of Go Fish, where there are only four of each card in the ‘pond’ and you need to weasel your way into holding them all.  Instead, the deck is infinite — there are as many eights as you need for everyone to make a full set!  Even money is infinite — heck, the treasury just keeps making more dollars every year!

Infinite abundance simply means that we each can have what is more than sufficient for our needs.  So you can have it all, and so can everyone else.